Davidson artist Herb Jackson will open an exhibition entitled “Across Time” on Friday, November 2, 6 to 8 pm, at Hidell Brooks Gallery in Charlotte. He will be showing new work juxtaposed with work from as long as 40 years ago, so that visitors can see how the work has evolved over time. The exhibition will run through the end of the year.

Hidell Brooks is located at 1910 South Blvd. The gallery shares the same parking lot with Sullivan’s Restaurant, and there is an adjoining parking deck if the front lot is full.

“I am often asked how my work has changed with time,” Jackson said. “It is far easier to show you than to explain, so I am taking this opportunity to juxtapose paintings from as early as 40 years ago with current work.

“The subconscious ocean that the artist swims in is deep and grows deeper with the years. It has many currents that can be followed, but the swimmer is contained by the shores of life experience, so the resulting paintings take on recognizable characteristics. Fortunately, the artist cannot predict the later work, but in retrospect the seeds for it are found in the earlier work,” he continued.

“My process is to build paintings by putting on and immediately removing a layer, leaving a residue of the new application in some places and covering it in others by the subsequent layer. It is a metaphor for the life process:

“Putting on:
The individual is formed through layers of experience.

“Taking off:
The ever shifting constructed self is revealed through the excavated layers of transformed memory.

“The concerns of my mature work have remained consistent while the final form has changed and evolved. I am still interested in the meditation of layering and revealing buried information, but there are more layers now (often 100 or more in the new work). The surface texture is more dependent on scraping compared to the earlier accretion of paint left by the drag of the brush. Intense color has always been an interest, but in the 1970’s it was hidden under layers of lighter value. Less of it is buried now. You will see similar mark-making in all the paintings.

“It is a pleasure for me to bring out a number of paintings that have never been shown or offered to collectors to hang with the new pieces. I hope they will relate to you and each other across time.”